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Finding common ground: Boy Scouts consider lifting gay ban

By T.W. Burger, For Public Opinion

Updated:
02/01/2013 10:00:51 PM EST

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A statue of a Boy Scout stands in front of the National Scouting Museum in Irving, Texas. The Boy Scouts of America announced it is considering a dramatic retreat from its controversial policy of excluding gays as leaders and youth members.

Despite pushback by anti-gay groups and others, the board of directors of the Irving, Texas-based Boy Scouts of America organization is considering lifting its ban on openly gay leaders and members.

The organization announced this week that the discussions were under way. Media outlets have reported that a decision could come as soon as next week, though the CEO of the New Birth of Freedom Council of the BSA said Thursday that the decision could take longer.

"There is no guarantee that it will be decided next week," said Ron Gardner, the scout executive and CEO for the council, which serves more than 11,400 youth in northern Franklin County as well as Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Perry and York counties. "It hasn't been decided yet. At this point, we have no plans on how this goes forward if it is approved. We don't know what the rollout might be."

The BSA, with roughly 2.7 million members and a million adult volunteers, down from membership as high as four million in years past, has been under pressure since the late 1990s to change their long-standing stance against admitting gays.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the scouts' right to maintain that stance, pointing to the constitutional right to freedom of association.

However, a number of organizations, businesses and individuals took the position that while legal, scouting's stance on gays was wrong.

Some, like some chapters of the United Way, issued a challenge, saying a failure to change the policy could mean scouting would lose their financial support.

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The Franklin County chapter of United Way is all for inclusion, but is not holding the threat of un-funding scouting in this area.

Amy Hicks, the local United Way executive director, explained.

"This has been something that the BSA has been working with for some time now. We have been in close communications with them for months. We support them because of the way they are working with the youth that they serve. Some time ago we looked at the practices of scouts and our guidelines in terms of what we hold agencies to," she said. "This issue is a little outside the guidelines we set; at the same time we want diversity in our community, we want to see inclusion We decided that this was an issue that the scouts needed to work through. We're going to continue supporting scouts in our community because of the work they do with our kids."

Hicks also said that the United Way has no reason to doubt that any boy in the community can be part of the local scouting program.

She said she could not say on short notice exactly how much financial support her agency gives to the Mason-Dixon and New Birth of Freedom councils annually.

"They are part of our funding initiatives that support education," she said. "They have been with us a long time. It has been a long-standing partnership. They work hard to attract as many kids as they can. (The matter of admitting gays) is an issue they are dealing with nationally. On a local level, what we see is that all kids are encouraged to be active participants."

Mark Barnernitz, CEO of the Mason-Dixon Council, which covers the southern end of Franklin County with 2,300 scouts, said whatever scouting's leadership decides, the final decision is likely to be left to the hosting organizations, often churches, in each council.

"We will follow whatever the national policy is," he said. "It will allow the local charter unit to make the decision; they will not require them to choose their leaders and membership."

For that matter, Barnernitz said, that has been largely how it has been all along.

"On our adult application, there is a check box, and known or avowed homosexuals are not allowed but we don't ask the boys at all."

Barnernitz also said that the decision under consideration now by the BSA leadership would have no effect on scouting's equally long-standing aversion to atheists.

Scouting asks for a belief in a higher power, but even that policy is not strictly enforced, he said.

Whatever decision the BSA leaders come up with, further controversy is assured, said Ron Gardner, who said his office in Mechanicsburg has been swarmed with emails and phone calls.

"People have very powerful passions on the subject," he said. "And that's on both sides."